If you combine most of them, your professor advised you to read about how to write a stellar essay, you will most probably receive something similar to this article. We don’t rewrite someone else’s posts online, we’ve done in-depth research to come up with this set of tips which can truly help you out when it comes to essay writing. We don’t want to waste your time talking about how difficult it is to write essays of the highest quality, so let’s get straight to business and get to know more about the essay writing process and how to improve your skills in it.
The only efficient way to write a plan for essay
You should not treat essay writing as one solid task. This way you can’t adequately plan the time needed to deal with it. Here we will show you how to break this big assignment into several smaller tasks and how to approach each of them most effectively. Here are the major principles you’ll use to write this work plan:
－This plan is only for you, not for your professor. Remember, this plan is not an outline that you will present and that will be assessed by one of your teachers. It should be efficient for you, so if you want to make it colorful or use slang words to express your attitude towards the assignment, feel free to do so.
－You should not waste your time creating this plan. It means that creating the plan, even the most efficient one, is not equal to completing the task. You should limit the time you are going to spend on planning, otherwise you may not have time left to write the paper itself.
－Your plan should describe both actions and content. You should take into account the time you need to do research, to systemize books and notes you have, to make formatting, etc. At the same time, you should also prepare a preliminary content plan. This way, when looking for references you will immediately add links and titles of the articles and books to the needed section in your plan.
－Every point in your action plan should be a single unit. It means that it should be impossible to divide a point into several more reasonable independent actions. For example, you write – “to do research.” It is too broad, and it demotivates. The options are to divide this point into the following single actions: to read notes from lectures and underline relevant parts, to find references for those parts mentioned by the professor, to put references in the corresponding parts of the content plan, to make a search in the particular online library your college has contracts with. See? It is not that scary, and it is much easier to follow these easy to understand steps.
How to choose a topic and what to do with the title
We don’t know your situation, in particular, so let’s assume that you can choose the topic yourself, and you just have a broad theme, like, for example, human rights, to write your essay about.
－ Choose a topic that interests you at least a little. There is a chance you find nothing interesting about the theme, so your task is to combine what you like with what you don’t like. Otherwise, you won’t be motivated enough to work on this topic. For example, you enjoy everything about digital. Find how you can link the digital world with the theme of your essay.
－ Don’t try to be a rebel in topics you hardly know about. Lots of students think that if they show themselves as rebels if they write scandalous things, choose more than unconventional stands, they will impress professors and get good marks even if the quality of the essay is not that good. It almost never works, you just look silly and immature doing it.
－Writing a title forget about the passive voice. Previously, it was almost a must to use the passive voice in academic writing as much as you can, but now this trend is practically dead. Fall in love with the simple verb – it is energetic, engaging and impressive. Just the way your title should sound.
Guide on writing quality essay content
Essay writing doesn’t require extensive research, it is not a term paper, not a thesis, so brace yourself. Limit time you need to do research, collect the major sources mentioned by your professor, don’t forget about lecture notes and start writing.
Creating a stellar introduction for the essay
If you are writing a five-paragraph essay, argumentative essay, analytical essay or similar, you need to include a brief thesis statement into your introduction. It should take no more than one sentence and relate to the major topic of your essay. Make it deep, or at least discussable, don’t write shallow, obvious things. For example, “running is good for people” is an awful thesis statement, but “Though many doctors warn against intense cardio exercises for people with obesity, running stays the most popular choice for people willing to lose significant weight” is already much better.
If you write a definition essay or expository essay, you can survive without coming up with a convincing thesis statement, but you need to focus on exploring the given term or issue in detail and explaining why it should be exposed.
How to write top-notch essay body paragraphs
Focus on the flow of arguments. You should have from three to five arguments supporting your idea, your thesis. Structure them so the most convincing one is the last one. If you have three strong arguments and two supporting ones, mix them the following way: strong-supporting-strong-supporting-the strongest.
Make sure to mention limitations and counter-arguments. Without them, your essay will look shallow and not very convincing. You should show that you’ve analyzed arguments “against,” and prove that your “pro” arguments are much stronger.
Tips for writing a convincing conclusion for an essay
Don’t add anything new to the conclusion part. This will confuse your readers and make your professor irritated. Students often add new information when they’ve just found some relevant sources, but don’t have time to include them into body paragraphs or are too lazy to do it. Your conclusions section should be nothing more than the summary of the work done and described earlier.
Paraphrase and repeat your thesis statement in the conclusions. Finalize your essay, stating why you were right from the very beginning, repeat some of your arguments and remind about the limitations to your study.